There’s a common thread here, as Sen. Obama is very popular no matter what, McCain is quite unpopular no matter what, and the war can’t be called popular by any stretch.

The Weekly Standard has this piece about what the response of these two men may indicate for their potential presidency. Read the whole thing, it’s more revealing than sound-bite campaign speeches or news briefs. Here’s Frederick Kagan’s conclusion:

For any voter trying to choose between the two candidates for commander in chief, there is no better test than this: When American strategy in a critical theater was up for grabs, John McCain proposed a highly unpopular and risky path, which he accurately predicted could lead to success. Barack Obama proposed a popular and politically safe route that would have led to an unnecessary and debilitating American defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.

The glaringly obvious question is why the media ignore the disconnect of a Catholic supporting a pro-abortion politician, no matter how much they like the candidate and their positions on anything else. The point is, unlike any other issue, abortion is about everything else.

When the topic was recently a matter of cable talking-heads’ concern, I was asked, repeatedly, in all seriousness, if Catholics can even vote. After all, war is bad. The death penalty is bad. Abortion is bad. John McCain supports the war on terror. He supports capital punishment. He is against abortion. Obama: antiwar, pro-abortion, functionally anti-death penalty. So neither wins. Or Obama wins? “Can Catholics vote for anyone?” readers asked.

Tip one: Embrace your inner fuddy duddy. Face it, you’re not hip or cool, or even a snazzy dresser. But you know what, senator? Neither was bill gates in school. And he did ok.

Tip two: Don’t make your age the issue, make his age the issue. You’re the one with the experience. Tell him he reminds you of the kid who was barely six years old when you got captured by the North Vietnamese and thrown in a prison. Oh, wait, he was!

Fr. Michael Pfleger’s fiery sermon in Trinity church in Chicago last week was consistent with his usual style, but this time it had specific political content forbidden by the Catholic Church in endorsing a political candidate (and making vile comments about another). Which is why Cardinal Francis George stepped in and gave Pfleger some time off “to put recent events in some perspective”.

This has played often and prominently in the media, of course, since it was the final event at Trinity that caused Sen. Barack Obama to resign from the church after a lot of other controversy there didn’t. But something I heard briefly reported has disappeared from newer accounts. It was a comment Pfleger reportedly made after his apology for the tirade.

The whole world has been watching the US elections more keenly this time, and not only because the digital media explosion makes that easier to do. It’s mainly been the Obama factor.

For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama’s victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation’s image abroad has been seriously damaged.

How damaged depends on who you talk to, and this WaPo article did a broad sweep.

The primary elections generated unprecedented interest around the world, as people in distant parliament buildings and thatched-roof huts followed the political ups and downs as if they were watching a Hollywood thriller.

The history books are being updated. A black man and a woman have reached new electoral heights in the nation. And an unpopular conservative Republican has grabbed the party’s nomination for president, in spite of the party’s bristling resistance to him.

Where to begin….?

I’ve been in Europe for the past week and a half, and it’s been a good break from these contentious times. Got back just in time for the final primary, pivotal as it turns out, for the Democratic party and the Republican nominee’s chance to distinguish himself. Here are some notes from the dramatic day…

The final days formed ‘the perfect storm’ - after the weekend’s raucous meeting of the DNC leadership trying to find unity in a glaring show of chaos, a black man and a white woman fought vigorously for the fractured Democratic party’s nomination with so much controversy, it derailed the message of what they most represented in ideology.…
click here to read whole article and make comments

They used to really like John McCain, until he began rising in the Republican party to become (virtually) the presidential candidate. Now, they’re paying attention to Bobby Jindal. They went to Lousiana to check him out, what with all the speculation on his chances to be on the ticket with McCain.

Politicians here say they are certain that Mr. Jindal would balance a McCain ticket, and not just because he is an Indian-American. The Christian right has a new champion in Mr. Jindal, a serious Catholic who has said that “in my faith, you give 100 percent of yourself to God.”

Bumper stickers saying “Jindal for V.P.” are circulating here, with increased velocity after the governor’s stay two weekends ago at Mr. McCain’s Arizona ranch. Mr. McCain’s schedule has him campaigning in Louisiana next week, according to his Web site.

…is still so far off. We’ve finally arrived at the final primary, and it falls only three days after the dramatic DNC meeting that settled the Florida and Michigan delegate problem. This contest is only getting stranger and…meaner.

WE’D heard a lot about Barack Obama’s fanatical sup porters, but little about Hillary Clinton’s frenzied following - until this past weekend’s meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Yet that passion is teetering on the brink of morphing into a raging anti-Obama force…

As voting was taking place, a woman wearing a “Team Hillary” shirt shoved a man wearing a small Obama button on his lapel, The New York Times reported. Another woman yelled, “McCain in ‘08! McCain in ‘08! No-bama! No-bama!”

The tired and overwrought analysis on Hillary Clinton’s mathematical impossibility of winning the Democratic nomination is old news.

She has been using a new equation. It’s yet another far-reaching scenario, because…

…somehow, a number of Clinton supporters have come to identify the seating of Michigan and Florida not merely with Clinton’s prospects but with the causes of democracy and feminism — an equation that makes a mockery of democracy and feminism.

Clinton herself is largely responsible for this absurdity. Over the past couple of weeks, she has equated the seating of the two delegations with African Americans’ struggle for suffrage in the Jim Crow South, and with the efforts of the democratic forces in Zimbabwe to get a fair count of the votes in their presidential election.

Somehow, I doubt that the activists opposing Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe would appreciate this equation.

Presuming Hillary Clinton is not going to be the Democratic candidate in the Fall presidential elections, the media have been sizing up the battle between the two very different worldviews of the men who would be president.

The presidential election, lawyers and scholars agree, will offer voters a choice between two sharply different visions for the ideological shape of the nation’s federal courts.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, has already asserted that if elected he would reinforce the conservative judicial counterrevolution that began with President Ronald Reagan by naming candidates for the bench with a reliable conservative outlook.

Sheila Reports promises a perspective here that you may not be getting in mainstream media and the politically charged blogosphere. Don’t expect political correctness, because politics doesn’t determine what’s correct. This space is grounded in the natural law and moral order. And it expects civility, goodwill and an openness to truth and reason.